For Number the Stars - Scholastic

THE GLENCOE LITERATURE LIBRARY

Study Guide

for

Number

the Stars

by Lois Lowry

A

i

Meet Lois Lowry

I would be a terrible newspaper reporter because

I can¡¯t write well about huge events . . . As a writer,

I find that I can only cover the small and the

ordinary¡ªthe mittens on a shivering child¡ªand hope

that they evoke the larger events.

¡ªLois Lowry, in her acceptance speech for the

Newbery Medal she received for Number the Stars

Copyright ? by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

L

ois Lowry was born in 1937 in Hawaii.

When she was just four years old, she says

she knew she wanted to be a writer. Her yearbook prediction read ¡°future novelist.¡± That

prediction came true.

Lowry attended Brown University,

where she studied writing. She later had

four children but never lost sight of her

original ambition. She explains that when

her children were young ¡°there was a wellworn path between the typewriter and the

washing machine.¡±

Today, Lowry is a successful writer and

the winner of Newbery medals for her novels

Number the Stars and The Giver. The Newbery is presented to authors of outstanding

books for young people.

Lowry¡¯s novels are sometimes humorous,

but they also delve into serious topics such

as war and death. She draws from her own

Number the Stars Study Guide

experiences or the experiences of people she

knows. She says that all of her books deal

with one general theme¡ª¡°the importance of

human connections.¡±

Lowry¡¯s first novel, A Summer to Die,

was published in 1977 and was partly

autobiographical. It tells the story of a

thirteen-year-old girl¡¯s efforts to deal with

the death of an older sister. Lowry, whose

beloved older sister had died, drew on her

own emotions and sense of loss to create her

character in this novel.

Lowry wrote Number the Stars in 1988.

She was inspired by a friend who had grown

up in Denmark during World War II, when

the country was occupied by Nazi Germany.

At that time, Jewish people all over Europe

were being arrested and then killed by Germans. In Denmark the Danish people banded together to save their Jewish population.

According to Lowry:

The Danish people were the only entire

nation of people in the world who heard

the splash and the cry and did not . . .

turn away from the disaster.

Lowry¡¯s novel is based on hours of conversations with her friend and others who

experienced the hardships of World War II.

She says these conversations helped her to realize ¡°for the first time . . . that historic events

and day-to-day life are not separate things.¡±

In much of her writing, Lowry tries to tell

the big story by relating small details. Lowry

uses this technique in Number the Stars. She

tells the large story of life in Denmark during

World War II through the everyday lives of

two young girls. Lowry says if she has a goal

in her writing, it is to focus on:

the vital need for humans to be aware of

their interdependence, not only with each

other, but with the world and its

environment.

9

Introducing the Novel

Lowry creates suspense and tension without

wavering from the viewpoint of Annemarie, a

child who shows the true meaning of courage.

¡ªNewbery Committee Chair Caroline Ward

10

if any reviewer should call attention to the

overuse of that image¡ªnone ever has¡ªI would

simply tell them that those high shiny boots had

trampled on several million childhoods and I was

sorry I hadn¡¯t had several million more pages on

which to mention that.

THE TIME AND PLACE

Number the Stars is set mainly in Copenhagen,

Denmark, in 1943. It is a time when war is

raging through Europe and parts of Asia.

German forces, commanded by Adolf Hitler,

have invaded the lands around Germany, and

Japan is attacking nations in the Pacific.

Great Britain, France¡ªand later the United

States¡ªjoin forces to stop the aggression.

Adolf Hitler was the leader of the German

aggression and was obsessed by the concept of

¡°racial purity.¡± He believed that the German

people were members of a master race and destined to take over the world. The German Nazis

believed that peoples such as Slavs and those of

African descent were members of inferior races.

Nazis also believed that Jews were members of

the lowest and most dangerous race of all.

Immediately after his rise to power, Hitler

embarked on a slow and steady campaign to rid

Germany of Jews. In 1935 German Jews lost

their citizenship, and marriage between Jews

and ¡°citizens of German . . . blood¡± was forbidden. In 1938 more than 1,000 synagogues were

burned, thousands of Jewish businesses were

looted, and 30,000 Jews were arrested. Jews

began fleeing Germany, but many nations

Number the Stars Study Guide

Copyright ? by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Annemarie is the main character in Number

the Stars, a novel set in Denmark during World

War II (1939¨C1945). In its simplest form, this

historical novel is the story of two ten-year-old

girls and the hardships they face while their

country is occupied by German Nazis. In a

much broader sense, it is a story of the entire

Danish nation and its people.

Annemarie Johansen lives with her younger

sister Kirsti and their parents in an apartment in

Copenhagen. Annemarie¡¯s best friend Ellen

Rosen, who is Jewish, lives with her parents in

the same apartment building. As the novel

unfolds, both families are learning to adapt to

the German soldiers who have taken control of

their country. Both Annemarie and Ellen try to

ignore the soldiers on the streets as they walk

home from school.

In an effort to adjust to the stress brought

on by the Germans, Annemarie often loses herself in the fairy tales she creates for her sister.

But the danger heightens, and fairy tales can no

longer mask the horrible reality, as German

soldiers begin arresting Danish Jews.

Lowry¡¯s inspiration for Number the Stars

was her friend Annelise. The two women

were friends for many years, and Lowry

heard many stories about Annelise¡¯s childhood in Denmark. However, it was not until

they were on a vacation together in 1988

that her friend shared with her some of the

things she had experienced as a child during

the war. Annelise remembered being so cold

that she had to wear mittens to bed. She

even remembered the high, shiny boots of

the German soldiers who occupied her

homeland.

Lowry makes many references to the soldier¡¯s

boots in Number the Stars. When Lowry submit-

ted her finished manuscript, her editor thought

there were too many references to the boots.

Lowry might have removed some of those references if, soon afterward, she hadn¡¯t met a Dutch

woman whose Jewish mother had been killed by

the Nazis. The woman, just a toddler at the time

of the Holocaust, remembered only one detail

about the soldiers who took her mother away¡ª

their boots. Lowry told her editor to keep the

references. She said she decided that:

Copyright ? by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

refused to take them in as refugees. As a result

of Germany¡¯s expansion, soon not only German Jews but Jews throughout Europe were at

risk. It was in Eastern Europe that the Germans

began the final and most horrific stage of their

anti-Jew campaign. They moved Jews out of

their homes and into special sections of the city

called ghettos. They established death camps

and embarked on a campaign of mass murder.

In early 1942, senior officials of the

German government met to devise a ¡°Final

Solution¡± to the ¡°Jewish Question.¡± These men

decided that Jews would be transported to concentration camps. There they would either be

worked to death or murdered. As a result of

this decision, millions of Jews were killed in gas

chambers.

In 1940 the country of Denmark, knowing

it was too small to defend itself against the

large Nazi forces, surrendered to Germany. At

the time when Number the Stars takes place,

there were about 8,000 Jews living in Denmark.

Most were the descendants of Jews who had

immigrated to Denmark hundreds of years earlier from Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Russia.

There were also about 1,500 Jewish refugees

who had fled to Denmark in the early 1930s.

In Denmark laws protected Jews from antiSemitism. This tradition went back to 1690,

when a Danish police chief was fired for suggesting that Denmark should imitate other

European countries and establish a ghetto

where Jews would be forced to live. In 1814

the Danish Parliament passed a bill making

racial or religious discrimination a crime.

When the Germans first occupied

Denmark in 1940, the former German ambassador to Denmark warned his superiors back in

Berlin that it would be dangerous to limit the

civil rights of Danish Jews in any way. Later, a

Gestapo colonel visited Denmark and complained that the Danes¡¯ tolerant attitude

toward Jews was beginning to influence the

German soldiers stationed in Denmark. He

feared that if a crackdown against Jews was

ordered, some of these soldiers might not be

willing to enforce it.

In 1943 when the Danish people heard

that the Germans had decided to arrest their

Jewish citizens, they banded together to form

the Danish Resistance. Members of the resistance helped nearly 7,000 people¡ªalmost the

entire population of Danish Jews¡ªcross the

sea to freedom in Sweden.

Did You Know?

Jews were not the only victims of Adolf

Hitler¡¯s desire to create a master race. The

Nazis also killed

? Gypsies

? elderly people

? mentally handicapped and physically

challenged adults, children, and babies

Number the Stars Study Guide

? people with epilepsy

? people with a history of mental

illness

? people too ill to work

? Jehovah¡¯s Witnesses

? people of Slavic nationality, including

Russian prisoners of war

11

Before You Read

Number the Stars Chapters 1¨C5

FOCUS ACTIVITY

Would you ever be willing to risk your life for another person? Under what circumstances might

you take this risk?

Journal Writing

While few people will ever be called to risk their lives for a friend or neighbor, many of us run

into situations that require courage to stand up for someone else. Try to remember such a situation in your own life and in your journal describe what happened.

Setting a Purpose

Read to find out how and why the members of the Johansen family take a risk for friends.

BACKGROUND

VOCABULARY PREVIEW

contempt [k?n tempt5] n. feeling of scorn toward a person or thing

exasperated [ig zas5p? ra?t??d] adj. extremely annoyed

imperious [im pe?r5e? ?s] adj. bossy or bullying in an arrogant way

intricate [in5tri kit] adj. very detailed

sabotage [sab5? ta#zh?] n. destruction of property or interference with activities as a part of an

effort against an enemy

12

Number the Stars Study Guide

Copyright ? by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Did You Know?

Throughout their long history, followers of the Jewish faith have faced prejudice and persecution.

The Romans banned Jews from the holy city of Jerusalem during the days of the Roman Empire.

A thousand years later, Crusaders massacred German Jews. In 1492 the Jewish population was

driven from Spain. By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the world¡¯s Jews lived in Russia

and Poland. A substantial number also lived in Germany, and about one million had emigrated

to the United States.

In the late 1870s, some people began to think of Jews as belonging to a different ¡°race,¡± and

some writers and politicians of the time began to criticize Jews for their religious beliefs. Adolf

Hitler¡¯s ideas about German ¡°racial purity¡± were an extension of myths about race. He used these

myths to generate hatred toward the Jews.

Rosh Hashana

Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year. It occurs on the first day of the seventh month of the

Jewish calendar, which is based on lunar months. The seventh month of the moon calendar usually falls in September. Rosh Hashana, which means ¡°Head of the Year¡± in Hebrew, is one of the

holiest days of the Jewish year. It commemorates the creation of the world and is a time for quietly reflecting on one¡¯s actions during the previous year and for repenting of one¡¯s sins. On Rosh

Hashana, an ancient musical instrument called a shofar is played. The shofar is a ram¡¯s horn.

When it is blown, it creates a high-pitched blast. The notes of the shofar call Jews to experience

a spiritual reawakening.

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